Succotash Clips Epi105: Mini-Chattin' with Paul Mecurio

I hate to do this right out of the gate, but I have to start the show off with an apology to our network and the affiliates. And, of course, you – the listener. This edition is meant to be an episode of Succotash Clips, wherein we feature clips, just clip, and nothing but clips. But I have a bit of a chat to toss in, too.

It’s just a smidge of a chat, really.

Friend of the show, past guest, fellow podcaster, and comedian Paul Mecurio called me up and said he was heading for the San Francisco Punchline this week (March 4-7) and could we chat up his appearance. I don’t know that we’ve got that kind of impact on an audience, but I do know that there are Succotashians in the Bay Area so I agreed and we did it.
It was via Skype from New York and the only worse than the quality of a Skype call is a Skype call where one of the people has laryngitis.

Paul also has a new comedy CD out, called It’s Not Me, It’s The World, so we’ll hear a track off of that as well.  But after that, I SWEAR the rest of the show is clips. For reals.

Except of a double dose of our Burst O’ Durst segment with comedian and social commentator Will Durst. Oh, and a Henderson’s Pants ad. And the Tweetsack. But the rest? All clips.

The delay for this ‘sode of Succotash making it to your ears was because I was suffering a miserable bout of laryngitis. Every other ailment in the world wouldn’t matter so, of course, a podcaster gets the one thing that keeps him off mic — no voice. You’ll get to hear how that sounded though, because I barely had my voice back last week when I interview Paul Mercurio.

Here’s what’s in the bushel basket o’ clippage we have in store for this show: Pass The Gravy, Proudly Resents, Sibling Rivalry, Soda Press, The Geep And Gam Show, and This Damn World. In addition, we unveil our NEW segment this week! It’s the brainchild of our associate producer Tyson Saner and we call it the Podcast Graveyard! When the time is right, we’ll feature a clip from a podcast that is no longer with us.

CLIPS

Pass The Gravy
Kicking off this show’s official rasher of clips with a show that requested we give them a listen. So Tyson wandered out into the podcast wilderness and brought back a sample of Pass The Gravy, with hosts Alex Middleton - I assume no relation to England’s Princess Kate Middleton – and his partner in crime Curtis Chaffin, also – it is assumed - not related to Kate Middleton. On their website they claim to solve the world’s problems one episode at a time, so it’s nice to know someone is taking care of those matters. They also claim that it is “the podcast nobody is listening to and everyone is talking about”. In this dollop from Pass The Gravy – and, really, what could be more natural than gravy and succotash – the hosts get into dolphin love. Deep into it.

Proudly Resents
We haven’t featured friend–of-Succotash Adam Spiegelman and his podcast Proudly Resents in a while. And Adam knows that because he listens. So being a proactive podcaster, he sent us in a clip from his recent interview, a second visit with director Eric Schaeffer. (I’m doing a little back-to-back with Proudly Resents this week. This clip was from his show about a month ago, but I’m also reviewing a more recent episode for This Week In Comedy Podcasts on Splitsider.com and for the Huffington Post, where his guest was TV producer Todd Yasui and there’s some amazing behind the scenes stuff revealed about The Tonight Show when Jay Leno was just starting out as the host as well as some revealing “inside baseball” info about the nuts and bolts of talk show television.)

Soda Press
We started getting some very kind retweets and mentions from a new podcast out there called Soda Press, hosted by a guy named Andy Thomas. And then he went and gave us a big ol’ shoutout at the top of a recent episode. So the least we can do is clip him for you. Soda Press episodes are pretty short, and feature Andy monologing about a given topic which spins off into related microrants. We have a snippet of him going off about gross gym wipedown towels.

Sibling Rivalry 
Kudos to our friends at the Sibling Rivalry podcast – that would be Jeremy, Stacy, and Aaron — for being savvy enough to know that the EASIEST way to get your comedy podcast clip on our show is to use our custom upload URL through Hightail (http://www.hightail.com/u/Succotash). That’s what our pals over at SibRiv used to get this clip to us, from a recent episode where they’re talking about some unique offers from strip clubs. (I have to also issue an apology to the SibRiv guys. Jeremy and Stacy were good enough to join me in the Podast Lab at the 3rd Annual LA Podcast Festival at the end of LAST SEPTEMBER for an interview. And I still haven’t gotten a chance to play it on the show — along with about a half a dozen others. At  this point, I may have to issue the interviews as special Succotash Chats halfisodes and just dump them out there. Sorry, guys…)

The Geep & Gam Show
Hosts Geep and Gam run their podcast out of…well, I don’t where the heck they’re from. But they asked us via Twitter if we’ve give’em a listen and clip ‘em and that’s what our stalwart associate producer Tyson Saner has done. In this slice, the show is playing host to two other podcast hosts, Diamond Dave and Aaron Corbett of Canada’s The Cool Story Show.

This Damn World
Another show that reached out via Twitter and asked if we’d give ‘em a sniff is the This Damn World podcast, hosted by Dom and Jenn. iTunes describes the show as “a longform conversational podcast” with topics ranging from news, life, and all around creative. The clip we have is from last month, snipped by Tyson out of an episode called “The One Where We Get Sweaty”.

Okie dokie. Succotash Clips with just a side of chat is kaputski. If you’re in the San Francisco area, remember to catch our friend Paul Mecurio this weekend, that’s March 4th through the 7th, at the Punchline. We’ll be back soon with an episode of Succotash Chats, where I’ll be speaking with comedian/podcaster and warmup guy for The Nightly Show, Kevin Bartini. See you then. In the meantime, please remember to pass the Succotash!

— Marc Hershon